Interpretation: a Journal of Political Philosophy

a journal of political philosophy volume 2/3 spring 1972 page 157 Jacob klein about plato's philebus 183 dain a. trafton on corneille's horace 194 harry v. Jaffa torn sawyer: hero of middle america 226 martin diamond the dependence of fact upon martinus nijhoff, the hague edited at queens college of the city university of new york interpretation a journal of political philosophy volume 2 issue 3 editors seth g. benardete howard b. white hilail gildin executive editor consulting editors john hallowell wilhelm hennis erich hula michael oakeshott leo strauss kenneth w. thompson interpretation is a journal devoted to the study of political philosophy. it appears three times a year. its editors welcome contributions from all those who take a serious interest in political philosophy regardless of their orientation. all manuscripts and editorial correspondence should be addressed to the executive editor interpretation Jefferson hall 312 queens college flushing, n.y. 1 1367 u.s.a. subscription price for institutions and libraries Guilders 36. for individuals Guilders 28.80 one guilder = ab. $ 0.31 = ab. 0.12 subscriptions and correspondence in connection therewith should be sent to the publisher martinus nijhoff 9-1 1 lange voorhout p.o.b. 269 the hague netherlands. 194 TOM SAWYER: HERO OF MIDDLE AMERICA Harry V. Jaffa In the last chapter of Tom Sawyer Becky tells her father, in strict confidence, how Tom had taken her whipping in school: ". the Judge was visibly moved; and when she pleaded grace for the mighty lie which Tom had told in order to shift that whipping from her shoulders to his own, the Judge said with a fine outburst that it was a noble, a generous, a magnanimous lie a lie that was worthy to hold up its head and march down through history breast to breast with George Washington's lauded hatchet." Truth about the Tom Sawyer, master of the noble lie, is the master figure of American literature, the character in whom, more than in any other, Americans fancy themselves to be reflected and idealized. Not Captain Ahab, pursu ing the great white whale, or Walter Mitty at the bridge of the destroyer, but Tom Sawyer playing hooky comes closest to our aspirations for glory. grin" To be described as having a "Tom Sawyer is an accolade of im measurable value to any rising politician. In recent years the man to whom this epithet was most frequently applied was the late President, General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower. It is a curious revelation of the American soul that the reflection of his Kansas childhood in his boyish smile and wave of the arms conveyed more of the reassurance the repubhc sought from his leadership than any specific achievement of his later life. We are a democratic people, and democracies love equality above aU else, as Alexis de Tocqueville so forcefully pointed out so long ago. We tend to equalize the distinctions based upon wealth and birth, but we tend also to equalize those based upon age. Where else is it considered an achievement not to be able to tell the mother from the daughter or the grandmother from the granddaughter? It is nature's way of providing immortality that a father should find in his son signs of his own qualities and characteristics. But it is part of democracy's quest for immortality to seek signs of its childhood in its elders. The ancients celebrated the strength that comes with maturity and the wisdom that comes with age. But we moderns turn instead to the cleverness and charm if not the in nocence of the young. In part this follows from our belief in science and progress. "When I contemplate the immense advantages in science and discoveries in the arts which have been made within the period of my life," wrote Jefferson in 1818, "I look forward with confidence to equal advances by the present generation, and have no doubt they will conse quently be as much wiser than we have been as we than our fathers were, witches." and they than the burners of As a nation we seem early to have Tom Sawyer: Hero of Middle America 195 been committed to a depreciation of ancestral wisdom and to an elevation of the young that reverses the order of nature. Tom Sawyer had no father. Aunt Polly tells us that he is her dead sister's son; but no allusion of any kind is ever made to his paternity. Even Huck Finn had a father, albeit the town drunk. Tom is the new boy, if not the new man, par excellence. Gang," "Tom Sawyer's whose formation is the culminating event, or conclusion, of the novel, is in fact the United States, whose founding or re founding is described symbolically within the framework of the plot. The democratization of the republic requires a juvenile hero to replace the father figure of Washington. We know of course that the "lauded Truth hatchet" about the was Parson Weems's invention, just as we know that Judge Thatcher is utterly deceived as to the generosity of Tom's lie. But Judge Thatcher's declared intention, to send Tom first to the National Military Academy and then to the best law school in the country indicates that even he comprehends somehow that Tom's destiny is that of a guardian of the democratic republic. What Judge Thatcher fails to realize is that Tom's education is already complete, that in the new order, of which Tom is a new prince, the boy is father of the man, and the old are ruled by the young. In the third chapter we find that the small fry of St. Petersburg meet regularly in battle under the rival generalship of Tom and Joe Harper, a bosom friend. The two commanders do not, we are told, condescend to fight in person. Rather do thev sit upon an eminence and conduct operations through aides-de-camp. We are not vouchsafed details of the conflict, although we may surmise it is carried on by well-defined rules, by which the advantages of the respective sides are evaluated. We are told that Tom's army won a great victory after a lone and hard battle, after which "the dead were counted, prisoners exchanged, the terms of the next appointed." disagreement agreed upon, and the day for the necessary battle All Tom's virtues, we learn, are in a manner arts of war, arts of force and fraud, in which the latter component is predominant. Tom may be said, like the grandfather of Odysseus, to surpass everyone in thievery and perjury. Yet his deceptions are of the grand, not of the petty variety. And they turn out, in the end, to be in the service of the law and justice and piety against which he appears to rebel. Tom's unregenerate individualism, or protestantism, which is the book's never failing source of humor, strikes a deeply sympathetic chord within the sanctuary of the conventions he appears to ridicule. In one of his moments of supreme glory, produced by a most profane deception, he makes the congregation of the little village sing the doxology with a passion and intensity they had not known. In the opening chapter the author tells us that Tom "was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well though and loathed him." In the end, however, Tom is the Model Boy. Tom, we may say, captures the town by his generalship. Tom's military skills are displayed in the opening episode, when he is 196 Interpretation hidden in a cupboard as Aunt Polly seeks him out. As her back is turned, he makes a dash for freedom, only to be caught by the taU of his coat. He stoutly denies all wrongdoing, but the evidence of the jam jar is upon him. "The switch hovered in the air the peril was desperate 'My! Look aunt!'" behind you, And as the old lady whirls around, Tom is gone in the instant, over the high board fence outside, and is lost to sight. There follows a long soliloquy in which we learn from Aunt PoUy that Tom is always playing such tricks and that she is always being victimized by them. She ought to be on to them now, she says, "But my goodness, he never plays them alike, two days, and how is a body to know what's coming?" Tom is an expert in trickery, not only because of the variety of his tricks, but because he knows how to work on the feelings of his subjects. "He 'pears to know just how long he can torment me before I up," get my dander she observes, "and he knows if he can make out to put me off for a minute or make me laugh, it's all down again and I can't lick." hit him a The next episode displays still further Tom's resourcefulness and something of the magnitude of the obstacles it faces. Tom has played hooky, as Aunt Polly expects he has, and at dinner she conducts a guileful (as she in her simplicity thinks) inquisition designed to entrap him. It has been a warm day and she supposes that he has gone swimming. He forestalls her by observing that "Some of us pumped our heads mine's See?" damp yet. Aunt Polly retorts that he wouldn't have to unbutton his shirt to pump his head and demands that he open his jacket to see whether the collar she had stitched closed is still securely in its place.

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